This study considers the concept of observer--the fundamental concept axial for fundamental physical theories. The history of the observer concept in physics is reviewed and summarized. In the following, the observer concept is considered with regard to science education where scientific concepts should reflect their status in science. This…

Statistical mechanics has received limited attention in physics education research and remains a relatively underrepresented topic even in research on upper-division physics courses. The purpose of this study was to explore potential challenges that physics students encounter when they solve statistical mechanics problems in groups. Adopting a…

Bounded by the statements of Feynman and Galileo, I describe certain tricks that can be useful for the teaching of physics. In particular, I describe the calculation of the center of mass (centroid) of an arc of circumference and a circular sector. For this purpose, I also use Pappus's theorems. An Appendix is available with Archimedes' method to…

The various aspects of projectile motion have been analyzed many times in this journal. As a sample, over the years, authors have investigated particular details of the path of a projectile and different situations for launching projectiles. Others have written about a nifty way to determine the maximum height of a projectile, finding the range of…

In this study, the performance of artificial intelligence chatbots--OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft's Copilot--was evaluated and compared based on their responses to questions from the Turkish Higher Education Entrance Physics Examination over the past three years. Analysis of the chatbots' responses to TYT Physics questions showed…

Large language models (LLMs) are now widely accessible, reaching learners across all educational levels. This development has raised concerns that their use may circumvent essential learning processes and compromise the integrity of established assessment formats. In physics education, where problem solving plays a central role in both instruction…

In high school, and also in introductory physics courses in higher levels of schooling, the law of universal gravitation of planets is introduced by postulating Johannes Kepler's three laws, and later Isaac Newton's law of the inverse of the square of the distance to the Sun. The justification of the laws is only achieved in advanced courses in…

Experimental results are presented concerning the motion of a ball that bounces up an incline a few times then bounces back down again. The number of bounces up the incline is typically small since the speed of the ball in a direction parallel to the incline decreases rapidly, not only during each bounce but also while the ball is in the air. The…

From my home on the west bank of the Columbia River in Richland, Washington (46.3°N latitude), I have an unobstructed view of the sunrise along the east bank during an entire year. As a retirement project after a career of teaching and research in physics, I decided to take photographs of the sunrise for a year and, and at the same time, carry out…

About 30 years ago I taught a series of summer enrichment programs for high school physics teachers, using funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes. I deliberately chose teachers from smaller cities and towns who were unlikely to have contact with other physics teachers. One of my more interesting teachers came from a rural area in a far…

The standing vertical jump (SVJ) is a classical topic in Newtonian mechanics (Fig. 1). Although the topic has also been treated by others (other terms used are "standing high jump" or "squat jump"), the present paper shows how a smartphone can be used to capture video of a jump and determine the jump height. A crucial…

In the movie Gravity, American astronaut and scientist Dr. Stone (Sandra Bullock) is on a spacewalk when tragedy suddenly strikes. An ever-increasing field of debris caused by a destroyed spy satellite damages the Hubble and Space Shuttle and quickly wipes out their mission. Dr. Stone spends the rest of the movie trying to find a ride back home.

This study proposes methods of reporting results of physics conceptual evaluations that more fully characterize the range of outcomes experienced by students with differing levels of prior preparation, allowing for more meaningful comparison of the outcomes of educational interventions within and across institutions. Factors leading to variation…

It is beneficial for quantum mechanics students to have a unified understanding of eigentheory concepts, so they can recognize the shared structure of mathematized phenomena from the different quantum mechanical systems of spin, energy, or position and recognize those as instantiations of the same overarching concept. Quantum mechanics instructors…

A Slinky is a loose helical coil spring and is a well-known educational toy. In this paper a model for a Slinky is presented. The Slinky is represented as a sequence of rigid half coils connected by torsional springs. A range of Slinky configurations in static equilibrium are calculated. Where possible the torsion spring model is compared with the…